Opinion Contributor

The not-so-imperial presidency of Barack Obama

There is no domain of public life on which the president can take a pass and defer to the judgments of others. On everything from gas prices to terrorist threats in Yemen to unemployment to the latest gun massacre, we expect our presidents to stand out in front, defining problems, offering solace, deriving meaning and paving a way forward.

Presidential candidates who foreswear the use of certain power instruments during a campaign — compare, for instance, Sen. Barack Obama’s principled arguments for the sparing use of signing statements with President Barack Obama’s regular and controversial employment of them — quickly learn to appreciate their merits once in office. And those who continue to resist the imperatives of power — James Buchanan, who refused to vigorously intervene on the issue of slavery; William Taft, whose reticence to lead so angered Teddy Roosevelt that he came out of retirement to seek another term in 1912; or Herbert Hoover, who appeared to hedge and founder during much of the Great Depression — are predictably repudiated by their contemporaries and largely forgotten by subsequent generations.

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Lest you doubt this, think of the political drubbing subjected to recent presidents who so much as appeared weak: Jimmy Carter, who was seen as sitting listlessly in office while U.S. hostages were held up in Iran for months on end; Bush, who refused to land Air Force One amid the carnage wrought by Hurricane Katrina; or Obama, who in the summer of 2011 was seen as letting a fringe group of House Republicans set the terms by which negotiations over raising the debt ceiling would proceed.

The mismatch between the expansive public expectations of the president and the formal powers he is granted yield a nagging preoccupation with power. At every turn, presidents must guard what power they have been given and invent what power they can in order to satisfy a public longing for leadership.

Democrats might not like what Republican presidents do with their power just as Republicans bristle at the behavior of Democratic presidents. Neither, however, should be especially surprised that any president wants more power than his predecessor had, than Congress might like or that a strict reading of the Constitution might permit.

If you have a problem with Obama, you should look to Congress and the courts. Though this former constitutional law professor might once have counseled executive prudence, he now has every incentive to guard, wield and grow his power — as has nearly every president who came before him and as will the next.